Dear Mr. Chretien,
cda-cdai.ca
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, December 28, 2001
Dear Mr. Chretien,
You and I have dedicated more than half of our lives to public service. Mine was spent within a profession that, quite rightly, will not tolerate open criticism of government policy. As a result, my post-retirement freedom of expression has been somewhat of a unique experience.
For the past eight years, as a frequent freelance media commentator, I have sought to be objective in my utterances, particularly regarding the Canadian Forces. If I disagreed with someone's opinions I made a point of not questioning the individual's integrity or intelligence. If I could not refute their facts and prove them wrong I felt I had no right to criticize their views in public.
Having met you for the first time in 1993 when you graciously asked me to run for your party in that year's federal election, I instinctively assumed that you would apply the same rule when dealing with your non-elected critics.
With the above firmly held beliefs, perhaps you can understand my shock and dismay on hearing your recent, highly inaccurate and inflammatory remarks regarding critics of the inadequate funding of our nation's defence policy.
I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt following your interview on CTV, but when I heard you repeat the same unsubstantiated accusations on Global, I realized you really meant what you said.
Directly linking recommendations for increased funding for the Forces to lobbyists for the armaments industry, as you did in your year-end interviews, might appeal to uninformed members of the public, but the statement is blatantly untrue. Your own Liberal-chaired Commons Finance and Defence committees; the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century, co-chaired by two of our mutual friends, the distinguished historian Jack Granatstein and Liberal Senator Laurier LaPierre; your government's own Auditor General; the American ambassador to Canada , Paul Cellucci; the NATO Secretary General, Lord George Robertson; your own senior cabinet ministers, John Manley and Art Eggleton; and yes, yours truly, to mention but a few, are not -- repeat not -- lobbyists for the armaments industry.
Our analysis of the state of the Forces and their outstanding shortfalls was driven by patriotism and, in a number of cases, a life-long obligation to the men and women in uniform who made us look good during our careers. To state that our efforts were motivated by financial self-interest was both wrong and insulting.
While attempting to recover from your first unwarranted accusation, I heard you say that senior officers wanted more dollars for equipment because they were mired in the strategy of 1939 and had not adjusted to the new reality of 2001. As someone who, in 1966, wrote his first paper on the need for an elite, light, strategically mobile, combat-capable army, I suggest that perhaps some of us were 35 years ahead of your own recent conversion.
Those who currently press you for new or updated equipment are merely doing so in order to meet the requirements of your government's own 1994 White Paper on defence. I hasten to emphasize that the forces and capabilities demanded by that paper are modest to the extreme and well short of our international obligations and potential capabilities as a important member of the G8 group of nations.
At this stage of your interview you can appreciate that I was a bit shellshocked, unaware that more was yet to come. The final straw that caused me to put pen to paper was your pronouncement that if you spent more on defence you wouldn't have it for health care!
If you were trying to scare the segment of the public that would actually believe such a blatantly untrue and sensationalist statement, you probably achieved your aim. It's unfortunate that the case against increased funding for the military is so weak that facts have to be made up, imaginary facts that, when uttered by the prime minister, are understandably believed by many. You and I know that it is not a choice of one or the other. There are literally thousands of other sources of revenue within government spending priorities to source increases in defence spending if deemed necessary.
If you don't mind, sir, while I'm at it, would you please tell the "spin" folks in DND, including the minister, to stop repeating the erroneous statement that our current deployment in the war against terrorism is Canada's largest military deployment since the Korean War.
Even the most generous calculations of our current deployments do not approach 50 per cent of our overseas deployments in the early '90s. At that time we had more than 10,000 of our military personnel deployed in Germany, Cyprus, Cambodia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Somalia, the Golan Heights and a multitude of additional smaller United Nations missions around the world.
On a positive note, I am encouraged by Mr. Manley's statements, partially endorsed by Mr. Eggleton, that there is a need for a major, concurrent and broad review of foreign and defence policy leading to new White Papers for both.
Unfortunately, the frequent statements from senior ministers, including yourself, that any new Defence White Paper should only recommend capabilities that a predetermined budget can afford suggests a less-than-serious exercise in determining our nation's role in the world.
Mr. Chretien, as prime minister, it is your right to ignore advice, even when it's creditable, unbiased advice given freely and in the best interest of Canada. I cannot accept, however, that it is your right to question the integrity and intelligence of those of us who disagree with you on some of the critical defence issues of the day.
To do so is not in keeping with the dignity of your office, which represents us all.
Respectfully,
Lewis MacKenzie
Retired Maj.-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie commanded United Nations troops
during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992. |
